The Cutthroat

January 30, 2017
An intriguing premise—Jack the Ripper is alive and well and rampaging across early-20th-century America—boosts bestseller Cussler’s 10th Isaac Bell adventure (after 2016’s The Gangster, also coauthored with Scott). Wealthy industrialist William Pape asks Bell, the Van Dorn Detective Agency’s chief investigator, to look for his missing 18-year-old daughter, Anna, who has run away from her home in Connecticut to become an actress in New York. When Anna turns up butchered in her Manhattan boarding house room, Bell’s investigation leads him to the bodies of other young women, all of whom have slashed throats and strange markings carved into their skin. Bell persuades his boss that, even though they have no actual client, it’s their duty to bring the perpetrator to justice. The detective finds that the killer, now known as the Cutthroat, has a connection with a traveling play, a modernized version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Fans of historical action novels will find a lot to like. Agent: Peter Lampack, Peter Lampack Agency.